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How Daft Punk’s ‘Discovery’ Went From the Album Critics Hated to a Stone Cold Classic

It might seem like a whole lot of fun and games, but being a music critic comes with a heavy cross to bear. When it comes to analysing and critiquing albums for publications just like this, our occasionally hastily-prepared thoughts can sometimes miss the mark. And when that happens, the stinking artefact remains online for the world to mock for all time.

With 2016 marking 15 years of Daft Punk’s landmark LP Discovery, seasoned music reviewer DAVE RUBY HOWE has brushed the dust off a creaky corner of the internet to find a number of album reviews that music journalists probably wish they could take back now. Because despite the reception at the time, a decade and a half laterDiscovery stands as one of dance music’s most important albums ever.

Today we know Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo as perhaps the most celebrated dance music outfit of all time, but at the turn of the century dance music wasn’t as keenly embraced as it is now.

After the success of 1997’s breakthrough hit Around the World, Daft Punk were known as the pair of kooky Frenchmen who’d managed to infiltrate the mainstream and were now dressing up in robot costumes. As such, some weren’t ready to roll with Discovery’s concoction of disco, house and funk, and critics served up plenty of lukewarm reviews when the album dropped in 2001.

Let’s start with Pitchfork. In his review, site founder Ryan Schreiber gives an underwhelming grade of 6.4 to Discovery, expelling particular gall on One More Time with this old-man-yelling-at-clouds impression: “Maybe I just haven’t taken enough ecstasy and horse tranquillisers to appreciate the tinny, sampled brass ensemble, the too-sincere ‘chill out’ midsection, or the fat drum machine beats that throb in time with my headache.”